A federal judge ordered the Justice Department Thursday to reveal more information from hundreds of thousands of recently released files about the case of late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein or provide a detailed explanation for why it could not do so.
US District Judge Emmet Sullivan gave the DOJ until July 2 to turn over less-redacted versions of certain documents or show why that information could not be made public.
He also ordered the Trump administration to publish a log of all redactions.
In his order, Sullivan noted that the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law by President Trump this past November, “required the production of the covered documents and the redaction log by December 19, 2025. The [acting] Attorney General [Todd Blanche] conceded that he is in violation of the Act.”
Blanche, Trump’s pick to replace Bondi as America’s top law enforcement officer, had been sued in late April by independent journalist and former MSNBC (now MS NOW) host Katie Phang, who charged the administration had “failed to produce the required documents within the time required. It has improperly redacted documents and failed to adequately explain those redactions. And it has either retracted, or failed to produce entirely, documents that should have been produced.”
The acting attorney general has insisted that the DOJ has no new material to release about the Epstein case, arguing that any documents the department currently has are duplicates of files already made public or contain explicit material about victims of the disgraced financier.
Epstein, 66, was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell on Aug. 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, and speculation has swirled ever since surrounding his connections to the rich and powerful — including Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and the former Prince Andrew, Duke of York.